Jóhann Jóhannsson is Composing the 'Blade Runner 2' Score

To some people, Jóhann Jóhannsson is the most controversial name attached to Blade Runner 2, a film that includes Jared Leto.

The Icelandic maestro, has already provided the tunes for Director Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Sicario, and the upcoming Arrival, but his next job is even harder. Jóhannsson is taking on the seemingly Herculean task of trying to follow in the footsteps of the uber-influential score of director Ridley Scott’s 1982 original Blade Runner. But then again, everything about a Blade Runner sequel seems like a difficult thing to pull off.

According to the Playlist, Jóhannsson announced the news on Icelandic radio station RUV. We know he’s no musical slouch — he’s already earned Oscar noms for scoring Sicario and the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, There’s no word yet on whether Jóhannsson will take an orchestral or electronic approach to the soundtrack, which is a key point.

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He’ll probably follow the musical notes of the original’s composer, Vangelis, whose score became a highly sought after artifact. Besides being one of the earliest examples of an electronic score hit, it didn’t get an individual release until ten years after the movie came out.

Jóhannsson’s work tends towards the electronic with orchestral flourishes, but we’ll have to wait and see whether he goes heavy on the moody analog synths.

Literally no details about the plot of Blade Runner 2 have been revealed other than that it picks up a few decades after the original Blade Runner. Besides Leto, Harrison Ford is reprising his role as Rick Deckard, and the rest of the cast is rounded out by Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, Barkhad Abdi, Carla Juri, Sylvia Hoeks, Lennie James, David Dastmalchian, and Hiam Abbass.

We’ll get to figure out what it’s all about when the Blade Runner sequel opens on October 6, 2017.